A New Family
by Okoriwadsworth
Summary: Laurel Lance is the Black Canary. She just... isn't doing great at it. Oliver Queen, and Team Flarrow, decide to fix it.


Joining the Family.

(Author's Note: This takes place from the first time Laurel puts on the Black Canary suit. The Oliver we saw on the show should have never let her out of the building with something so poorly constructed. So, here, he doesn't. Also this takes place right after Flash Knockout. So, if you liked grumpy Oliver Queen there, you'll get more of it here. Lauriver endgame.)

Oliver Queen isn't, personally, a vain man. He doesn't spend hours in front of his mirror reveling over every new abdominal muscle. His reasons for training aren't because he wants to look spectacular with his shirt off. It's because, for his night job, the concept of being in anything less than Olympic-level shape increases the likelihood he'll die, and die painfully with a maximum of blood loss at that.

So when he left Starling City in the hands of a coterie of heroes to help train his brother Barry Allen in the finer points of hand-to-hand combat, he assumed he wouldn't be coming back to town to help someone else do the same thing. But, and this is the part of his life he's really getting tired of having to deal with, nothing about any of his plans seems to work anymore. So, of course, he got a phone call from another brother of his, John Diggle, explaining that he needed to come home quick because someone got hurt when they were shadowing the SWAT team on what was supposed to have been a stoppage of a routine bank robbery.

It took him a minute, but when he figured out who that could have POSSIBLY been, his blood chilled.

He always cared about Laurel, but that caring was different than what he felt for Felicity. Felicity was demanding, never as kind as she had been to him when they first met, and if he was being honest, the ogling of him was getting tiring.

Laurel, though? She always wanted what was best for him, and even gave him permission to try things with Felicity when she saw he wanted her blessing. That, he believed, was her true heroism. She wanted happiness for others, joy for others, even if she believed she could no longer have it herself.

And it was at this moment that, like a hydrogen bomb, the thought came to him. He still loved Laurel. And if he could guide her through this pain, he would tell her. And whatever she decided, he'd be ok with that.

He also knew he had to break up with Felicity. She was a good woman, and she was not worthy of being someone's second choice. Someone out there would love her. It just couldn't be him, not anymore.

So, he grabbed Cisco and "asked" him to bring everything he needed to make someone a new suit. This was going to be a LONG week.

_**Meanwhile, back in Starling City…..**_

Laurel Lance was being fussed over, and if she was conscious, she'd be telling everyone how much she hated being fussed over. Trouble was, at the moment, she was not conscious.

You see, in her night job, Laurel Lance was the Black Canary. She wasn't doing as well with it as she would have liked. While her sister, Sara, had the advantage of three years of League of Assassins training and another year training with Oliver Queen, she had…. None of that. Instead, all she had was gumption and whatever she could remember from those self-defense classes her father insisted she take. And on this day, that gumption got her hurt. It wasn't like she was shot, or run through with an arrow. More like she ran in to a bank robbery and got hit with a gun butt before anyone saw it.

It was to this tableau that Oliver Queen entered, seeing every other member of his team standing around an unconscious Laurel in a suit that looked less like something lovingly constructed and more like just a leather jacket and a pair of loose-fitting leather pants.

Rather than deal with the rage in his heart that someone dared to hurt someone close to him like this, or the slowly-dawning realization that he was still in love with Laurel, he decided to address one problem at a time. Better to tell her what he thought, what he FELT, when she was awake to hear it.

Instead, he started by preparing. He told Cisco and Diggle to take a look at Laurel, and figure out what they thought would be the best possible suit for her needs.

He pulled Diggle to the side and explained how much he loved Laurel, and got nothing but a wide smile and an understanding nod. He then asked him to serve as a quartermaster, and help Cisco construct some hand-to-hand weaponry best suited to her needs.

With her clothing choices and weaponry taken care of, Oliver then moved on to the next stage of his plan: fight and tactical training.

For this, there was really only one person he could have gone to. Someone who loved Laurel as much as him, even if their love was platonic instead of romantic.

He found Nyssa in a different area of the bunker, picking up his bows and testing them for the balance. The thought crossed his mind that anyone else would have been knocked senseless for such a blatant act of disrespect. But disrespecting him wasn't what Nyssa was trying to do, he realized. To her, these were his tools. She wasn't trying to break them. She was trying to understand how he used them.

"Nyssa" he said carefully, making every attempt to let her know he had walked in. "I need you to help me."

"Let me guess, Mr. Queen. It is your love there on the table across the room?" smirked Nyssa, although the jury was still out on if she could make any facial expression other than a barely-amused smirk.

"Don't tell her until I get a chance to, but yes. If she is going to do this, I need her as trained up as I can get her. And I can think of no one else I would rather want to be responsible for training her than you" said Oliver, trying to keep the concern out of his voice.

"Mr. Queen, Laurel has introduced me to the joy of not just black-and-white milkshakes, but to joy in general. I did not want this life for her, as I am sure you did not want it for her either. But, despite our hopes, she has chosen it. And if this is her choice, we both owe it to her to make sure she is as prepared as she can be. When she is awake, and when she is ready, we will begin" stated Nyssa confidently, reaching into a duffel bag and pulling out her own bows, quivers, and several different types of clubs, staffs, and sticks.

"Oh, and Nyssa? My friends call me Ollie."

With her training handled, he moved on to what he figured was the last part of his job. But in order to do that, and finish setting up her bootcamp, he needed to leave the bunker and head to her loft.

With a nod to Diggle and Nyssa to keep watch, and call him if anything changed, he went to her house to see about setting up some kind of a home gym for her.

Firstly, though, he was hungry. He didn't think she would mind, but he walked into the kitchen to see what he could scrounge together for food. The stress of preparing Barry for fighting, and then seeing the shape Laurel was in, meant he just wanted something easy, something simple.

So when he opened the refrigerator, he was disappointed. All he saw was the basics. No proteins beyond eggs, and honestly, he didn't feel like making an omelet at this time of day. What there was, though, was lots of Chinese food containers. Not enough to make a meal out of the leftovers, but enough to make him wonder what she was eating for fuel.

Grumbling to himself, he nonetheless opened the freezer and saw again nothing but ice cream. At this point, the grumbles turned into full-on growls. But not at her. Never at her.

Despite himself, he went into her kitchen cabinets and her pantry. All he saw was the beginnings of meals, or low-nutrition junk food.

At this point, he was madder at himself than he was at her. How had he let this get to this place? How had he not stepped in and seen what was going on?

With that, he did something that would have seemed to be utter anathema to him when he first returned from the island. He set up a group text.

_**A Few Hours Later…**_

When she woke up, Laurel Lance looked around and noticed everyone deep in work. John Diggle was happily gesturing at designs on a large computer next to… wait, was that Cisco Ramon? From Central City?

Next to them, Nyssa Al-Ghul was climbing the salmon ladder with the ease of someone who had seen the trick a million times while Roy Harper fired arrow after arrow into a target.

But as Laurel got up, everyone's attention turned to her just as Felicity Smoak walked into the room.

"Going on a date with Oliver Queen is stressful. Where is he? And why are all these people here?"

"It's a bootcamp, Felicity" grunts Oliver Queen, walking into the room with several large shopping bags as he looks around for a hot plate or stove of some kind. "I failed Laurel, Felicity, and I'm not going to do that again."

"But what about our date, Oliver? We're going to miss our reservation if we don't leave now. Can't this thing wait? I mean, Laurel isn't really cut out for vigilante life" blurts out Felicity, which draws the hateful glares of the entire rest of the room at her.

"SHUT UP. I was going to tell you this in private, like a gentleman, but you are insulting one of my dearest friends and someone I love more than I could have ever thought I could love anyone. Laurel is cut out for this life. She has the heart, and the desire, to do it. What she doesn't have, YET, is the skill. That is what this is about. If you want to stay, and provide help where you can, you can. But you are NOT going to insult her ever again. Are we clear?" growls Oliver Queen, and everyone glares at Felicity waiting for her answer.

"You know what, Oliver? I'm done. Find yourself a new tech bunny." And with that, Felicity walks out and locks the door behind her.

"Well, that was unexpected. Actually, do you know what, guys? Could you give me and Laurel a minute?" he asks, turning around to see everyone else stunned into different kinds of silence.

Turning around, he looks at a stunned Laurel Lance who is shaking and pale.

"You can't….. Felicity is perfect for you, Ollie" she blurts out, unbelieving that this could possibly be happening.

"No, Laurel, she's not. She doesn't see the best in me. She just wants me to follow her around, to be her pet. You, though? You always have. You wanted me to be happy, even if it meant you couldn't be happy yourself. That ends now. The happiest I have ever been is when I was by your side. And if you want to be a part of this life, a part of MY life, you will be. I will make sure you are as ready as you can be. Do you want this?"

"Ollie, I've always wanted this" she says, leaping into his arms.

_**A few months later…..**_

Things had actually gone well, and not well at all. Nyssa agreed to stay in Starling City for good, and had become the field general for Team Arrow. John Diggle found new life as the team's clothier and quartermaster, spending his time when not as Oliver's bodyguard ensuring that everyone's weapons were up to date. And then there was Laurel.

She got a bootcamp, with individual education, to ensure she could do this job as well as possible. Nyssa Al Ghul showed a stunning aptitude for teaching, leading a class on stealth and intimidation in addition to working with Laurel on increasing her fighting skill. John Diggle, bodyguard and three-tour veteran of Afghanistan, showed her how to read a room upon entering it.

And then there was Oliver. He spent hours with her, just her, teaching her everything he had learned about fighting. He took her to supplement stores to buy her all the things she needed to keep healthy and strong, butcher shops and fishmongers in the Glades to get her used to doing her food shopping around people who knew what they were selling, and even spent a weekend teaching her the basics and finer points of cooking.

After her bootcamp, Oliver had led the rest of Team Arrow to Central City to continue their educations. Barry Allen, the Flash, had been only all too happy to walk them through how to handle a crime scene. Joe West had given them tips hard-learned from a career as a detective on how to properly interrogate someone without needing to resort to putting an arrow in them. Heck, even Caitlin Snow and John Diggle joined forces for a masters-level course in battlefield medicine and triage.

And then, Wally West had been kidnapped by Zoom in front of them all. Without even thinking of it, because that's just the sort of man he is, Barry Allen agreed to Zoom's terms that he surrender his speed. As soon as that was done, though, Zoom ran off with Iris West in front of all of them.

This caused a problem. Everyone on Team Arrow, even Nyssa, had grown to love the Flash. He was just a decent man who wanted to be the best hero he could be. So they all wanted to stay and support him, and Team Flash. But they all couldn't.

So straws were drawn. And Oliver stayed behind with Laurel while everyone left to keep Starling City from falling into utter chaos. They'd train here some more, and make sure Central City didn't get the idea it was unprotected while the Flash was gone.

And then, Harrison Wells had a plan. Sure, it was a stupid plan with more chances for it to go wrong than for it to go right, but Oliver figured that in the land of blind people, a one-eyed man was a king.

So the particle accelerator got re-started. Laurel screamed and Jesse Wells and Wally West were hit by the wave as well, but luckily Oliver wasn't.

Because when they all woke up, they discovered that every person who got hit by the gene had developed meta-human powers. Amusingly, Jesse and Wally got super-speed themselves. But it was Laurel's that was the most important to Oliver.

She had a scream that could knock down buildings.

After helping Barry stop Zoom, with the aid of a Cisco-made collar that helped to focus the power of her scream, she went back to Starling City.

And Laurel Lance, who had once thought everyone didn't want her to be the Black Canary, never stopped being the best one she could be. And she got another family out of it. Brothers in multiple cities, sisters to go along with her blood sister, and even… even a fiancé.

She had made a new family, and she couldn't be happier.


End file.
